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Van de Putte enters lieutenant governor race

Van de Putte enters lieutenant governor race

SAN ANTONIO — State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, a veteran lawmaker whom Democrats hope will energize Hispanic voters to make their party competitive for statewide office in the 2014 elections, formally announced Saturday that she will run for lieutenant governor.

With Van de Putte vying for the state’s No. 2 office, and fellow state Sen. Wendy Davis running for governor, Democrats hope to attract women voters against what will likely be two men on the Republican side.

Appearing together later in the day at an Austin phone bank where 200 volunteers were making calls for Davis, both women underscored that the focus of both campaigns will helping Texas’ families. Davis said she was glad to have Van de Putte in the race.

“Leticia stands for the values of Texas,” Davis said. “It will add to the dynamic of 2015 … Women make excellent candidates. They make excellent leaders.”

Last June, during a 10-hour filibuster by Davis in the Senate over a bill to restrict abortions, Van de Putte repeatedly tried to be recognized to speak before asking, “At what point does a female senator have to raise her voice or her hand to be heard over her colleagues in the room?”

Her comment set off wild applause and chanting from the gallery, packed with abortion-rights activists, that stopped Senate action and killed the bill by pushing a vote until after a midnight deadline. The bill was approved in a second special legislative session.

While Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, a Republican, branded the crowd “an unruly mob,” Davis and Van de Putte were hailed as heroes by national women’s-rights groups — in what galvanized her run for governor.

Saturday’s announcement made official what had been perhaps the worst-kept secret at the State Capitol in recent weeks, the first time that Democrats had fielded two women as candidates for the top two state posts.

“I’ll fight to ensure that women will never again be treated like our government has treated them,” she told the cheering crowd, noting that she and “Gov. Wendy Davis” will fight for the rights of all Texans, not just those who have money and lobbyists.

“For a long time the politicians in Texas have not done much … We can’t afford to keep kicking the can down the road.”

Insisting that “Texas can do better,” Van de Putte criticized GOP spending plans that have decreased funding for public schools, on Texas’ crumbling highway infrastructure, on economic-development programs that she said have become giveaways to big business, over cuts to veterans’ health care benefits and on water and other issues the state is facing.

She took aim at incumbent Dewhurst and the other GOP candidates for the post — state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples and Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson — for spending much of their campaign in recent months trying to appease tea party activists.

“They’re all trying to out-extremist each other,” she said to cheers from the crowd of about 700. “That, my friends, is a problem.”

Van de Putte, a mother of six with six grandchildren, added: “It’s about my grandchildren. It’s about your grandchildren. I have to run.”

“Mama’s not happy with how things have been going lately. And when Mama’s not happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

Van de Putte made her announcement at a late-morning rally at San Antonio College, a standing-room-only crowd that included veterans in uniform, family and hordes of Van de Putte’s San Antonio constituents, even a mariachi band.

Even if Van de Putte does not win, she will return to the Senate in her current seat that represents much of San Antonio and Bexar County because she will have two years remaining on her term.

A pharmacist by occupation, the 58-year-old Van de Putte is a veteran Texas legislator, having served in the Texas House from 1991 to 1999 and in the state Senate since then. During her tenure she has been an outspoken advocate for human-services and education funding, for military veterans and against human trafficking.

She served as the chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus from 2003 to 2011, and was Governor for a Day last May when both Gov. Rick Perry and Dewhurst were out of state. She is also a nationally recognized Latina figure, having served as president of the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators from 2003-05 and the National Conference of State Legislature in 2006-07.

She served as co-chair of the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008.

Van de Putte considered a run for governor two years ago against Perry, but decided to stay in the Senate. Born in Tacoma, Washington, she was raised in San Antonio and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School and the University of Texas at Austin.